Reviews: Holmqvist, Ninni

The Unit —
Ninni Holmqvist

Ninni
Holmqvist’s 2006 dystopia, The
Unit: A Novel,
was translated in 2008 (from the author’s Swedish to English) by
Marlaine Delargy.

Dorrit
Weger lived her life on the margins of Swedish society: never
marrying, never having children, settling for a series of occupations
that, no matter how personally satisfying, left her perpetually on
the brink of insolvency. At age fifty, she is removed from her
decaying house, separated from her loving dog, and consigned to the
Second Reserve Bank Unit for biological material. The Unit takes in
dispensable people — authors, artists, homosexuals, and other
non-conformists whose occupations are of no real use — and transforms
them into valuable resources, as experimental medical subjects and
involuntary organ donors.